Brazilian romcom A Mulher Invisível beats Terminator into second place

Romantic comedy A Mulher Invisível, the second feature from Brazilian director Claudio Torres, has beaten Terminator Salvation into second place at the box office in Brazil.

The comedy took $880,000 last weekend (June 19 – 21) from 214 screens compared to the Hollywood blockbuster’s haul of $590,000 (R1.2m) from 433. Both films are in the third week of release and A Mulher Invisívelhas taken $5.4m (R11m) since opening on June 5 and is now just marginally behind Terminator’s $5.6m total gross.

A Mulher Invisível, which literally translates as The Invisible Woman, tells the story of a romantic but hapless young man (Selton Mello), whose wife leaves him after getting pregnant by a German millionaire. He then gets together with his football-loving neighbour, who falls in love with him. She is perfect, doing all the cooking and clearning, but unfortunately, she does not exist.

The film has attracted more than 500,000 cinemagoers so far, and is expected to pull even more in the following weeks.

The spectacular success of Se Eu Fosse Voce 2 and other local titles helped drive ticket sales in the first six months of 2009 to $244.8m in Brazil, an increase of 34.6% from the same period last year while admissions rose 31.1% from 42.2m in 2008 to 55.4m this year.

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